I went back to my boys, and it was the best hour of my life, and then it ended the way all of them end, with a coach telling you the bus is leaving.
I do not remember the bus. I do not remember the hotel.
I remember Emma's hand and a corridor and a door, and then it was 6 in the morning, and the Moscow sky through the gap in the curtains had gone the grey that is not quite light.
A radiator was ticking somewhere. Tk. Tk-tk. Down in the street a lorry was reversing, that flat electric beep going over and over, some other man's ordinary Sunday starting up under my window while mine came apart.
I had slept in yesterday's shirt. I could smell the grass on the cuffs.
And the phone was going.
Bzz. It walked itself across the bedside table on its own vibration, a little at a time, all the way to the edge. Bzz. Hit the lamp. Stopped. Bzz. Started back the other way.
